Some fifty years after Francis Bacon had urged the study of the history of learning (historia literaria) in the early seventeenth century, this new discipline began to be developed in the Hamburg region. One of its main proponents was Daniel Georg Morhof, Major’s colleague at the University of Kiel. Major himself engaged in this study in many ways. The history of learning offered a platform for scholars to review the institutions, media, and genres of global knowledge from the dawn of time. Scholars studied how varying knowledge practices related to knowledge’s advance or decline. The premise of this study was that current scholarly practices in Europe were flawed and could be improved through attention to global epistemologies and practices. These views infused Major’s approaches, as in his attention to prehistoric knowledge or his study of global curating practices as the basis for a new approach to the museum. As this chapter explores, he also participated in the critical review and reform of knowledge infrastructures including dissertations, journal publications, critical commentary, citation practices, cataloging, note-taking, and ways of connecting disciplines together.

Late seventeenth-century scholars sought to distinguish themselves from the stereotype of an academic pedant. They developed a new model of a scholar who was "prudent" or "gallant," that is, witty, strategic, fashionable, and judicious in career choices and areas of focus and able to perform fluently in mixed and noble audiences. They aimed to establish their reputations as celebrities by attracting attention in popular genres such as vernacular periodicals. Historians have recently identified this new model as an ancestor of the research scholar. Early modern academics constructed this model in contrast to the stereotype of doctrinaire bookworms committed to a priori systems. Prudent and gallant scholars embraced the change of knowledge over time. From a position of deep ignorance, they nevertheless dared to frame conjectures that might be disproven. They pivoted quickly in response to new evidence and varying audiences. Major exhibited these ideals in his vernacular science fiction, Voyage to a New World without a Ship or a Sail, and in his adoption of Fama (fame or rumor) as his personal brand.